Archive for the ‘Life: News Commentary’ category

I have memories of eating Marathon chocolate bars (now Snickers) or sucking on Opal Fruits (now Starbursts) and then cleaning up using Jif cream (now Cif) and Bounty towels (now Plenty).

Now wonder my memory seems to be going – history is being re-written…

Incidentally, and what sparked this post off, is that “Bounty” have recently rebranded in the UK as “Plenty” – but watching US adverts (such as those currently on the Discovery US Mythbuster’s site) shows they are still using Bounty as the name in other markets… Interesting

If you are sending more than 1,000 letters on a single day, you can get a discount of 1.5% – if you are sending over 20,000 you get 5.5%. However, if you are sending around 100,000 letters in a batch and they are presorted then the cost is just 15.85p: but if you are sending that many letters you have an option not to use Royal Mail (you can use UKMail etc): however, the small business person and normal consumers don’t have that option and have to pay Royal Mail’s ever increasing prices.

Like this:

If you’ve been even slightly following the news, you might have read that “Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick” made a security blunder on Wednesday the 8th of April by accidentally exposing a “Secret” document to Downing Street photographers (technically a breach of the Official Secrets Act).

The UK’s “top medical adviser”, Sir Liam Donaldson, has drawn up plans for a minimum price for alcohol of 50pence per unit of alcohol they contain for the purpose of “tackling alcohol misuse” – although it isn’t clear from the BBC’s article how this figure was arrived at (it could be a figure Donaldson just “plucked out the air”).

So how does this affect Richy’s house hold? Well, there’s just the two of us and we like the occasional drink (maybe 2 or 3 a week): sometimes, we have a glass or two of wine at night with our evening meals, occasionally I’d have a “nightcap” of Whisky and very very very occasionally (like once every 6 months), I might have a very small amount of Absinthe. Katy quite likes Port and Sherry. So which items would go up in price – here’s the current contents of our drinks cupboard:

(we do normally have a bottle of champagne in the house as well as that’s Katy’s preferred drink of choice, but we appear to have ran out).

As you can see, we’ll be looking at a £5.30 increase without the Absinthe (which, to be honest, I first of all doubt I’ll finish drinking before I’m 50 and secondly, I probably wouldn’t buy another bottle – it’s just too strong: it’ll be a total increase of £10.33 if we were to include it).

The more pricery drinks, since as the whisky and the Sancerre, seem to avoid the price increase: and those are the sort of drinks I would imagine members of the government quite liking (coincidence maybe?).

I can’t see having a minimum price would actually help avoiding alcohol misuse, as the “easy to drink”/”easy to abuse” stuff, such as Carlsberg Larger which Sainsbury’s are currently selling at £17.49 for 24 cans of 440ml: that’s 3.8%/1056cl=40 units would only go up to a minimum of £20 (a £2.51 increase) and “Alchopop” Bacardi Breezers wouldn’t actually change price from £3.78 for 4x275ml bottles: 4%/110cl= 4.4units as the minimum proposed would be £2.20.

How can we stop or reduce alcohol misuse? Education – encourage adults to teach their children that one glass of wine at a meal is ok (say, start when they are 8-12) and hence they should learn that it is nice in moderation: and they shouldn’t learn to abuse it. Also if they have alcohol “reasonably available” at home (regulated by the parents), then they won’t “sneak down the shop”, illegally buy bottles and drink it unsupervised. The government could also introduce labelling on alcohol such as “Do you think you are drinking too much? Do you feel somebody is abusing alcohol? Then call Drinkline free on 0800 917 82 82 or contact DownYourDrink.org.uk“: along with making it clearer how much alcohol is in a single bottle/can, what a “serving is” (i.e. a glass of wine, a shot of whisky) and how much alcohol is in a serving.

As you may aware, the UK’s Performing Right Society (PRS) has had a “little falling out” with YouTube. Basically, as far as I can tell from the BBCreports, YouTube is not willing to pay what the PRS is requesting (some say the PRS is asking for considerably more money the currently, some say that YouTube is offering considerable less).

Anyway, without an agreement with PRS in place to pay royalties to artists and songwriters, YouTube has no right to play their music in the UK. YouTube is, therefore, following the law and PRS’s own policies by blocking those music videos on their site: as they don’t have permission from PRS to play the music.

However, Feargal Sharkey of the UK Music industry body is saying that by following the rules YouTube is using a “blatant, cynical, manipulative” negotiating tactic. So now YouTube is in the wrong because they are following the rules? If they didn’t block the videos, they’ll be breaking the law – but by blocking the videos PRS’s artists are missing out on exposure… I think the PRS needs to think which is more worth while: having lowish quality music videos available on YouTube for potential purchasers to come across and then buy singles (and therefore let YouTube host them for free), or demand so much money from YouTube that it’s not worth them offering the music videos.